Irish Literature Quotes

#1. At one point in my life, I wanted to do a master's degree in Irish literature, but I ended up getting pregnant instead.

Miriam Toews

#2. If we turn to early Irish literature, as we naturally may, to see what sort of people the Irish were in the infancy of the race, we find ourselves wandering in delighted bewilderment through a darkness shot with lightning and purple flame.

Sean O Faolain

#3. Well, they may not be civilized, but they certainly are confident - and this confidence is one of the open-handed pleasures of early Irish literature.

Thomas Cahill

#4. She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen.

L.M. Montgomery

#5. People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it's better to be with sheep who don't say anything at all.

Paulo Coelho

#6. No one was more important than my mom and dad. I know they are watching from a place up in heaven here today to make sure all their kids are doing good.

Eddie Murray

#7. I read mostly Irish, African, Japanese, South American, and African writers. You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.

Chris Abani

#8. For a tiny speck in the Atlantic, Ireland has made an outsize contribution to world literature. It's a legacy we can all be proud of, one that would take many pages (or indeed a whole library of books) to recount in full.

Rashers Tierney

#9. Once asked what action he would recommend if a person were to feel a nervous breakdown coming on: Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, and find someone in need and do something for him.

Karl A. Menninger

#10. Many people don't know, but American Girl Scouts get to travel the world, and that's a very good thing, as the more we can expose our young people to other cultures, the better off we'll be in this increasingly globalized environment.

Anna Maria Chavez

#11. There were three of them, all with rapiers, and she had only a dagger. It would have been a wretchedly uneven fight, if she were human.
It was still a wretchedly uneven fight; it was just uneven in her favor.

Rosamund Hodge

#12. In life, we all have a cross to bear and a unique story to tell. We just hope that someone will take the time to listen.

Greg McVicker

#13. I can let you in, Eva. I'm trying. But your first response when I screw up is to run away. You do it every time and I can't stand feeling like any moment I'm going to do or say something wrong and you're going to bolt.

Sylvia Day

#14. Tottenham ice their sublime cake with the ridiculous.

Peter Drury

#15. There was still gold and silver in the mountains,
And hunger was a more immediate sorrow

W. H. Auden

#16. For the British after 1857, the Indian Muslim became an almost subhuman creature, to be classified in unembarrassedly racist imperial literature alongside such other despised and subject specimens, such as Irish Catholics or 'the Wandering Jew'.

William Dalrymple

#17. What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.

Idries Shah

#18. I am not functioning very well. Living with the knowledge that the baby is dead is painful. I feel so far away from you, God. I can only try to believe that you are sustaining me and guiding me through this. Please continue to stand by my side.

Christine O'Keeffe Lafser

#19. A man [Joyce] whose earliest stories appeared next to the manure prices in the Irish Homestead knew that columns of prose, like columns of shit, could both recultivate the earth.

Declan Kiberd

#20. Half the time, in this life, you wouldn't know where you are nor when. There are moments of unpleasant liveliness. Tamp that the fuck down is best.

Kevin Barry